Life as a resident is hard work and no one knows this more intimately than Dr. Christine McDonald, a third-year resident at St. Michael’s.

Over the past three years of residency training, she has spent five months at St. Michael’s working on various medical services including infectious disease, endocrinology and respirology. Following those rotations she became the senior medical resident on Team D.

A senior resident has many responsibilities such as overseeing the care of the patients on her team, teaching and mentoring medical students and junior residents, assigning patients to the appropriate team members, verifying team members’ patient notes and formally reviewing and providing written assessments for each patient admitted during her shift.

When on-call, the senior resident on general internal medicine is also responsible for responding to requests from the Emergency Department to determine whether patients should be admitted for work-up or discharged home with followup. The senior resident also leads the code blue team for the hospital during the shift, managing cardiac and respiratory arrests.

“One of the most interesting aspects of being a resident on general internal medicine is having the opportunity to work on so many different patient cases both as a teacher and a learner,” said Dr. McDonald. “Working with the patients to identify what has brought them to hospital and ultimately gaining insight into their medical issues is very rewarding.”

Although every day is different in the life of a resident, Dr. McDonald shared a sample of one of her on-call rotations to help illustrate the diverse amount of work accomplished over 24 hours: